The big story

Global leader in domain names and Internet security VeriSign on Wednesday announced that the fourth quarter of 2017 saw approximately 1.7 million domain name registrations. With this, the total number of domain name registrations reached approximately 332.4 million across all top-level domains (TLDs). New “.com” and “.net” domain name registrations totalled 9 million during 2017…

Google India has announced the launch of Tamil language support for its advertising products – Google AdWords and Google AdSense to support the Tamil language web publishers and also help advertisers to reach out to the large base of Internet users in Tamil. With this launch, Google has now scaled support for Indian language advertising…

US technology trade groups representing Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google have urged the Trump administration to retain an Obama-era rule that allows some spouses of H-1B visa holders, including Indians, to also work legally in America. Groups including the Information Technology Industry Council, the US Chamber of Commerce and BSA-The Software Alliance wrote to Citizenship…

The tussle between Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy and NDTV founder-promoter Prannoy Roy seemed to be heating up. But the fight has gone a step ahead with Swamy asking for a lookout notice against Roy. Taking on to the Twitter, Swamy asked the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the IT Department to issue a…

This issue’s coverage of Amazon and Paytm is Part 2 in our E-com series. Through statistical output, diagrams and explanatory we highlight the tax avoidance conduct of these companies and in the case of Amazon, a reckless breach of FDI regulations governing inventory and the marketplace.

First, let’s look at the FDI regulations in India related to e-commerce. In India 100 pc FDI is permitted in B2B e-commerce. However, FDI was not permitted in B2C e-commerce earlier (till Mar 2016). But, many companies had started selling on B2C model. So the matter landed in Delhi High Court and the Court directed investigations into 21 e-com websites. During the pendency of the case, in March 2016, FDI norms were changed and 100 pc FDI was allowed in the marketplace, the restrictions on inventory were retained. The notification was issued on March 9, 2017.

A study of Amazon’s share pattern shows that India operation has 17 companies registered in India. Amazon Seller Services Pvt Ltd, operates the marketplace. Another entity to watch out for is Cloudtail India Pvt Ltd. While 100 pc FDI for marketplace was allowed, government disallowed dominance of one seller. The total sales of one vendor, was capped at 25 pc.

Taiwan-based smartphone manufacturer HTC launched the flagship HTC U11 smartphone in India soon after its international launch. The phone had several technology innovations, powerful innards and a compact form factor. More importantly, it was priced competitively to compete with other premium smartphones.

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi seems in no mood to slow down. Its latest phones, the Redmi Note 5 and Note 5 Pro, seem similar on the first look but are very different devices. While the Note 5 adds ultra-wide screen along with enhanced camera on the back when compared with the Note 4, the Note…